Fracking ‘too dangerous to health and climate’ to be allowed

Anti-fracking and Keystone XL pipeline activists demonstrate in lower Manhattan on September 21, 2013 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP) / AFP

Developing fracking technologies and extracting previously inaccessible hydrocarbon reserves is the absolutely opposite direction to where the world should move, environmental activist Rose Braz told RT.

This path would simply cause damage to public health and
contribute to catastrophic climate change in the long run, she
argues.

RT: Environmental risks of fracking aren’t unique to
that method of extraction – why such an outcry when there are
other methods of energy production that are just as harmful when
it comes to fossil fuels?

Rose Braz: There’s no doubt that oil and gas production in
general is risky to human health and ecosystems and our future in
terms of climate change. I think there are however some
additional factors that are associated with fracking that make
fracking a particularly risky form of energy development, which
has led to these massive protests you’re seeing across the world.

One, there are 632 different chemicals that we know are used in
the fracking process. About 25 percent of them are known
carcinogens. We have evidence of water contamination, from
Dimock, PA to Pavillion, WY to Parker County, TX. These are
associated with fracking.

And the other thing that’s happened is that fracking has expanded
oil and gas development into areas where it previously did not
occur. A colleague of mine likes to call fracking ‘oil and gas
development on steroids’. So many more communities are seeing
fracking in their backyards and these risks are coming right to
their next door.

RT: Do you think you can balance that with the
potential benefits? For better or worse, we are dependent on
fossil fuels for our cars, for our petrochemical industry, for
our plastics. The US has boosted its own economy because shale
gas exploration in this way. Europe may follow suit. Do you think
that’s worth the risk for things like energy independence?

RB: The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change came out just a couple of weeks ago and it
reiterated what has been found before by the International Energy
Agency. We need to keep about two-thirds of known fossil fuel
reserves underground to stand even a chance of avoiding the worst
impacts of climate change.

So now is not the time to be delving into extremely risky new
forms of fossil-fuel development like fracking and acidization –
that are new forms using chemicals and millions of gallons of
water – and exacerbating a climate crisis precisely at the time
when we need to be moving towards truly green, clean, renewable
energy.

We need to start keeping fossil fuels in the ground right now.
Eliminating these new extreme, unconventional forms of energy
extraction like fracking is the way to go, not expanding them. I
think communities around the world are recognizing this and
that’s why you have a ban in France, just upheld by the Supreme
Court in France. We have a moratorium in New York in this
country. And we’re fighting to keep fracking out of California.

RT: There are some studies that have found adverse
effects in many areas. There are other studies showing there
aren’t negative consequences in other geographic areas. Could the
issue be more about individual safety measures at sites rather
than the method itself?

RB: There’s a long history of communities being impacted
by fracking and oil and gas development, and families reaching
confidential settlements with oil companies to receive
compensation on the sort of damages they’ve suffered. There’s a
long history of that happening here and the reality is that what
we do know, despite the money and the confidential settlements,
are places like Pavillion, WY where the EPA came in and initial
findings were that fracking chemicals had made their way into
water supplies there; Dimock, PA, where people have been forced
to buy bottled water because they were unable to drink their
water.

Despite the best efforts of oil and gas companies to keep these
damages under wraps, we’re seeing more and more evidence of
fracking’s impacts. Even the best regulation can’t make these
threats and risks go away, and particularly the risk to our
climate. Here in California, we have 15 billion barrels of oil
that they now believe are accessible through new fracking
technologies, and really that is an amount of carbon dioxide,
carbon pollution, that is on par with what the US emits in an
entire year if we were to extract that and combust that. So we’re
talking about adding tons of CO2 to our environment and our
climate precisely at the moment when we need to be moving away.

RT: California did pass an anti-fracking measure and
there are others I understand that are following suit. Are laws
like that the answer, in your opinion, to stopping the
practice?

RB: We believe the practice is simply too risky to our
air, our water, our public health and our climate to continue. So
what we are fighting for with communities all across this state
and the country – and internationally, with these 200 actions
taking place at the Global Frackdown – is for a ban on fracking.